TECHNOLOGY AND CODE article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional and Applied Plant Genomics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1690015
This article is part of the Research TopicAnalysis of Genetic Basis of Crop Stress Resistance and Variety ImprovementView all 8 articles
Optimizing Fitness: Plastic Flowering Time in Variable Environments
Provisionally accepted
- College of life sciences, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Flowering time is a critical determinant of crop yield and adaptability, regulated by the integration of environmental cues, phytohormones, and genetic networks. Abiotic stresses such as drought, waterlogging, salinity, and high temperature, together with biotic stresses including pathogens, viruses, and herbivores, profoundly reshape flowering phenology through microRNAs, transcription factors, epigenetic modifications, and hormonal crosstalk. Phytohormones, especially ABA and GA, act as regulatory hubs coordinating stress adaptation and floral transition, though their effects vary across species and conditions. This review synthesizes recent advances in stress-mediated flowering regulation and emphasizes the challenges of balancing stress tolerance with yield stability. We propose that integrating multi-omics data, regulatory network modeling, and artificial intelligence will accelerate the breeding of stress-resilient cultivars with stable productivity.
Keywords: Stress resistance, flowering time, phytohormone, Environmental stress, Regulation mechanism
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 23 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dong, Zhang, Xing, Chang, Qiu and Song. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Nianwei Qiu, nianweiqiu@163.com
Yuguang Song, syuguang@qfnu.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.